Building an integrated
talent management strategy
A briefing paper from the Economist Intelligence Unit
sponsored by Oracle
Building an integrated talent management strategy
Preface
Building an integrated talent management strategy
is an Economist Intelligence Unit white paper,
sponsored by Oracle. The Economist Intelligence
Unit’s editorial team wrote the report, and the
findings and views expressed do not necessarily
reflect the views of the sponsor. Bill Millar was the
author of the report and Dan Armstrong was the
editor. Richard Zoehrer was responsible for layout and
design.
November 2007
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
Building an integrated talent management strategy
Introduction
S
enior executives often claim that people
drive the value of the business. They are
right. According to a recent survey conducted by
the Economist Intelligence Unit for Oracle, senior
executives at corporations worldwide
judge the ability to attract and
retain people as one of the most
critical enablers of growth.1
But they have to be the right
people. Every organisation
relies on key clusters of
critical talent in order
to be able to execute
its business strategy.
These employees drive a
disproportionate share of
revenue and earnings. They
Featured interviewees
8 Aditya Birla Group
Dr Santrupt Misra, Global HR & CTO
8 Den Danske Bank
Lars Mørch, Member of the Executive Committee and head of HR
8 Office Depot
JoAnne Moeller, VP HR, compensation, benefits and
HR-Information management
8 United States Navy
Ken Decker, Chief Petty Officer, Retired
Tony Martin, Chief Petty Officer, Retired
8 Unisys Corporation
Mary Massung, VP Unisys University
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
generate high value for customers and shareholders.
They have strong skills and deep knowledge—not just
of the work itself, but of how to make things happen
in the organisation. Without such employees, senior
executives would be “pushing on a string” rather than
executing their strategies.
The ability to attract and
retain people is one of the most
critical enablers of growth
Moreover, the skills and knowledge of such
employees ensure that they are in great demand.
They are valuable to their current employers.
They may be even more valuable to their current
employer’s competitors. Without a talent
management strategy focused on keeping critical
people engaged—including talent maps, targeted
training, clear career paths, job rotation and other
development tools—critical employees may be
sending out résumés rather than executing the
organisation’s strategy.
1 Economist
Intelligence Unit, Technology and growth at mid-sized companies, a research
study sponsored by Oracle, 2007 (available at http://eiu.com/sponsor/oracle/mid-sized/)
Building an integrated talent management strategy
Developing a talent management strategy
T
he task of developing a talent
management strategy often falls
to human resources (HR) professionals working in
consultation with the business functions. But HR
also carries out the more traditional administrative
functions such as handling employee benefits,
delivering payrolls, ensuring compliance with
government regulations, and recruiting and
interviewing new staff. To become truly valueadded partners in any business, HR needs the
resources, tools and management buy-in to get the
administrative tasks under control and move up to
a position of strategic adviser. From talent mapping
and planning to performance evaluation, recruitment,
retention and even benefits administration, today’s
human capital professionals are constantly seeking
new ways to streamline, integrate and align human
capital functions with broader corporate objectives.
Mary Massung is an HR-focused executive at
Unisys Corporation and vice-president of Unisys
University, an in-house training and development
vehicle. She is among those who claim that it is
people who create the value in an enterprise: “That’s
especially true in a service business like ours, where
you’re not just selling your company; you’re selling
the skills and abilities of your people. If your people
don’t have the right skills to meet the expectations
of your clients, your organisation will fail.”
According to Ms Massung, the management team
at Unisys Corporation “very much understands the
strategic value of human resources”. In fact, she
says, business managers at the company “very much
view us in HR as a strategic partner—someone they
can turn to help them achieve their business goals”.
Unisys Corporation is not alone. Anecdotal
evidence indicates that more and more management
teams are waking up to the value of a more
deliberate approach to managing people and
talent. This is the case at a large European bank.
According to the firm’s senior vice-president of
HR, as the company began to measure its employee
engagement, it made an interesting discovery.
“What we began to notice”, says the executive, “was
that almost every measure of performance success
we were to observe, be it profit margin or customer
“If your people don’t have the right
skills to meet the expectations of your
clients, your organisation will fail.”
Mary Masung, HR executive, Unisys Corporation
satisfaction, moved almost in lockstep with indices
of employee satisfaction.”
That realisation led the organisation to additional
findings. “What we learned was that the more
attention you pay to individual employees, the
greater their satisfaction,” says the executive. This is
not to say simply pay the workers more and increase
their benefits. Instead, explains the executive, “it’s
often simply taking an interest. Ask them how they
like their work/life balance? Do they feel challenged
or valued in their work? Are they satisfied with
where they are? Are they aware of development
opportunities and advancement?”
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
Building an integrated talent management strategy
These are simple questions, but there is
enormous value in developing a consistent means of
gathering, analysing and responding to the answers.
Essentially, says the executive, “we’re helping
our people plan and manage their careers. We’re
taking an interest in their personal development,
and satisfaction.” Treating people as individuals
and addressing their strengths, weaknesses, and
work and life goals “has an enormous impact on
people’s attitudes towards their work”. The executive
believes that this, in turn, “translates into stronger
performance and higher retention”.
A senior financial executive of a large US
technology firm agrees, adding that one of the
ways his HR executives deliver value is by helping
the company to customise the careers of its most
valuable workers. “We call it a life plan,” he says.
“Where do they want to go in the organisation? What
do they want in their life?” By going through the
process of designing and continually updating an
individual career path, he says, “we get more from
our people, and we keep them longer”.
Both the bank and the technology firm are elevating
the HR function from a primarily administrative
focus to a more strategic one. Says the technology
executive: “You may need to treat people as
individuals, but you need to manage your peoplefocused processes collectively, based on facts. Only
in this way “can you maximise the value of your
workforce. You can turn people management into a
competitive differentiator, a source of advantage.”
Perhaps the key step that the technology firm has
taken is to communicate to managers throughout the
company that they will be measured by—and to some
degree compensated on—the degree to which their
employees are engaged. Simply put, engagement
is a key driver of performance. And by monitoring
and measuring engagement, the human resources
function can provide critical insight to managers on
what works, what doesn’t, and how they can do better.
The importance of integration
T
he technology executive believes that
herein also lies the importance of having an integrated and consistent technology platform
for human resources management. “To be effective in
human capital management today, you need very precise and timely information about individuals—and
you also need to be able to analyse this information
collectively in order to make informed decisions.”
The more integration between activities as diverse as
recruitment, payroll and benefits management, training/development and performance measurement,
“the better you’ll be at overall workforce planning,
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
the better you’ll be at managing and motivating
individual workers, and so the more effective you’ll
become as an organisation”.
An integrated technology platform also gives
HR executives more time to focus on strategic issues. Says the banking executive: “We’re a dynamic
organisation where people move around a lot.”
So whether a manager or employee is in London,
Prague, Dublin or elsewhere, “the performance
management system, the frameworks and the software are all consistent”. This enables the company
to create “one culture” and “one set of processes”.
Building an integrated talent management strategy
It also “enables HR to spend less time on administration and more time on value-adding activities”.
At its most basic level, organisations deploy HR
software to reduce the burden of day-to-day administrative tasks such as payroll or benefits reporting
and compliance. Adding self-service HR administration not only reduces costs, but generally increases
employees’ sense of control and their satisfaction. As
JoAnne Moeller, vice-president of human resources,
compensation, benefits and HR-Information management for Office Depot, explains, “automating routine
HR tasks significantly reduces costs”. But at the same
time, the HR clients ”like do-it-yourself HR services
because they can get what they need from wherever
they are and whenever they want”.
But HR technology can also help to execute more
value-added tasks. For example, in the case of talent
management, technology can help organisations to
implement improvements in the following areas:
n Recruitment Is the organisation pursuing the
right people? How successful is it in attracting the
right candidates? Tools such as e-recruitment or
onsite application kiosks are a start. The results can
be gathered and analysed to generate benchmarks.
And randomised trials can help organisations to
track the effectiveness of competing recruiting
techniques.
Integrated HR processes can tie together
employee performance, evaluation
and compensation—from the executive
suite to the machine shop
getting the organisation’s human capital from its
current state (where it is now) to some future state
(where it needs to be). These efforts can be documented and tracked by:
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n Talent mapping Given the organisation’s
business focus and strategic direction, what mix of
talent and skills will help it to execute successfully?
If the talent mix is absent, how can it be developed
or acquired? Working with line and senior management, HR executives can develop recruiting strategies and design training programmes that focus on
existing or emerging needs.
creating detailed workforce planning and skills gap assessments;
identifying high-potential personnel (and fol
lowing through with additional development and retention services); and
adopting more flexible development programmes and reaching a broader audience through
e-learning.
n Performance planning and evaluation
Employees who understand where they add value
do a better job of adding value. And managers
who clearly communicate what they expect from
their employees, and how these expectations tie
into compensation, help employees become more
engaged and effective. Here, HR systems can help
managers to develop feedback loops between
n Workforce planning and development
Much of the work of the HR function focuses on
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
Building an integrated talent management strategy
“You need to have an idea of what you
want to accomplish for your business and
the ways better management of people
can help you achieve that.”
Lars Mørch, HR executive, Danske Bank
performance expectations and actual performance
over time, evaluate the effectiveness of performance
metrics, enable a range of review techniques and
create a single home for all information about an
individual employee.
In short, integrated HR processes can tie together employee performance, evaluation and compensation from the executive suite to the machine
shop, research and development (R&D) lab, warehouse or sales floor. These processes clearly link
the value people create to how people are valued.
For instance, at Costco, inventory shrinkage—the
reduction in inventory value through shoplifting or
employee theft; damaged, stale or lost products; or
paperwork errors—is controlled by tying one-fifth of
the bonus of all employees to this metric.
n Retention Retention is another area where
consistent processes can help the HR function to
identify clusters of key talent, set retention benchmarks, apply retention strategies, and then evaluate and refine approaches over time. For example,
clear and broadly implemented processes can help
companies to:
l determine the characteristics that best define the most critical performers, then proactively manage their development, compensation and engagement over time;
l identify the early warning signs of employee © The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
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defection, in time to act;
evaluate the degree to which various combina
tions of incentives influence behaviour and retention, and establish an optimal budget for rewards; and
establish a formal learning and development plan for all employees and track progress by individuals or groups of “like” employees.
Strategy first
Technology-enabled processes may be powerful. But
strategy comes first, says Lars Mørch, a member of
Danske Bank’s executive committee and the head of
the group’s HR function. Danske Bank is the largest
bank in Denmark and one of the largest in Scandinavia, with total assets of over US$500bn.
“You need to have an idea of what you want to
accomplish for your business and the ways better
management of people can help you achieve that,”
explains Mr Mørch. But once a company knows
what it wants to accomplish in HR, “that’s when
you can determine what technology you need—and
then the technology becomes a tool to help you
achieve your strategy”.
Building an integrated talent management strategy
Danske Bank: Growth takes talent
C
lose alignment between HR and
business strategies is “always
important”, states Lars Mørch, a member of Danske Bank’s executive committee and the head of
the group’s HR function. But having HR strategies
that march to the same beat as those of senior and
line management is even more important when an
organisation is pursuing significant growth through
a global acquisition strategy.
Danske Bank was already the largest financial
services provider in Denmark when, in 2004, the
group acquired two Ireland-based entities, National
Irish Bank and Northern Bank, for a total of around
US$1.8bn. In 2007 the company also acquired
Sampo, a Finnish insurer, for just over US$5bn.
Mr Mørch believes that an organisation experiencing “this level of growth” will “have great need of
talent”. Not surprisingly, many of the HR strategies
and practices at Danske Bank today focus on talent
management. Mr Mørch adds that this is, in fact “one
of the most important ways we in HR can help the line
managers—by helping to recruit, identify, develop
and retain good people throughout the group”.
Having HR strategies that march to
the same beat as senior management
is important when pursuing growth
through global acquisition
A focus on measurement
At Danske Bank, measurement is everything. “We are
fact-based in our HR approach,” says Mr Mørch. “Look
at any process here, and you will see that its effectiveness is being measured. We believe that all aspects of what you are doing should be based on what
the numbers are telling you. Measurement is the only
way you can be certain of the impact your actions are
having on what you are trying to achieve.”
Now look closely at any of a handful of HR proc-
esses, says Mr Mørch, “and you will see how we
measure our effectiveness”. For example, in the area
of recruitment efforts, “we measure the number
of applicants”. But the measurement doesn’t stop
there. For example, three months after an applicant
becomes an employee, “we check with them whether
or not the job and the training we promised them is
the same as what they were given; what they’re experiencing,” he says. Then a year into employment,
“we ask them still more about their job and their
relationship with their co-workers and managers”.
Essentially, according to Mr Mørch, rigorous
measurement of HR’s effectiveness creates a cycle
of continuous improvement. He believes that a
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
Building an integrated talent management strategy
similar measurement can be seen in all phases of
HR at Danske Bank, from recruitment to development and retention.
An open culture
Another intriguing element of Danske Bank’s HR
strategy is the openness of its performance evaluation practices. Mr Mørch comments: “We believe
people feel more confident about their career and the
organisation when they understand exactly how they
are perceived. We believe writing or talking behind
someone’s back about their career breeds distrust.”
“We believe people feel more
confident about their career and the
organisation when they understand
exactly how they are perceived.”
Lars Mørch, HR executive, Danske Bank
In concert with these beliefs, the group runs HR
software that enables each employee “to be able to
access all of the information about themselves”. By
using the tool, he adds, employees can access basic
details about themselves such as salary, bonus schedules and the like.
But far more powerfully, notes Mr Mørch, “I
can see my ratings from my manager and how my
performance is ranked. I can see details: how they
rate my sales ability, how they rate my managerial
potential.” Such evaluations “are performed in a
face-to-face dialogue, where the managers give
the employee a rating from A to F” across a broad
range of relevant performance areas. An ”A” rating
10
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
in this case “means the employee is ready for new
challenges”. Mr Mørch believes that such a practice
is not only motivating for staff, in an organisation
hungry for talent, it also helps the group to “identify high potential employees”.
Similarly, employees can use the IT tool to access
details about needed skills and capabilities for specific jobs throughout the group. In addition, they can
access e-learning tools to address any gaps in their
experience or performance shortcomings. Upon completion of any course, “students” are tested. Where
the course is deemed successfully completed, that
fact is then noted in the individual’s file, becoming
an element of future evaluations.
All of this, notes Mr Mørch, empowers individual
employees. “Basically, you can see all your strengths
and weaknesses. You know what you need to work on.
You see your potential to the organisation. You can
see where you want to go and what you need to do to
get there.” Such openness, he continues, is highly
motivating, “because it shows you that what you
make of your career is up to you”.
But by corollary, such practices and capabilities
give the bank access at all times to a clear picture of
its talent portfolio. Mr Mørch believes that this enables Danske Bank “to be more effective in mapping
the talent we have to the talent we need”. Any perceived gaps can be addressed through recruitment,
retention and development. “It is a very strategic
approach,” he says.
The technology
Mr Mørch maintains that at his group the strategies
and processes of HR are inextricably linked with the
strategies and processes of the business at-large. For
example, “the performance measurements we use,
the technology tools we give to the managers and to
employees, everything that we do we’ve worked closely
with the business units to prioritise and develop”.
Building an integrated talent management strategy
From there, the technology backbone of Danske
Bank’s HR systems is a combination of a comprehensive package acquired from a large vendor in tandem
“with a couple of IT solutions we made ourselves”.
In addition, says Mr Mørch, “we use a lot of generic,
web-based tools—it’s an open [sourced] architecture
approach”. Overall, Mr Mørch’s opinion is that the
technology employed by his HR group “is very effective in terms of helping us to achieve our strategies”.
But for those wishing to replicate the success, Mr
Mørch offers the following advice: “You should never
start with the tools. Start with what you want to do,
and then find or develop the tools that will allow you
to do that.”
The US Navy: Sharing knowledge electronically
W
hen a business executive’s
preparation for a position is
insufficient, it may cost the company in terms of
revenue or profit. But when the training of an officer
or sailor in the US Navy is lacking, the stakes can be
significantly higher. As such, the US Navy takes its
leadership development and training perhaps more
seriously than most other organisations.
Ken Decker and Tony Martin are both retired
chief petty officers and now full-time independent
contractors. They are key members of a team whose
focus within the Navy’s training and development
frameworks is to assess and continuously improve
the effectiveness of the organisation’s online
knowledge management system.
Naval knowledge: online
According to Mr Martin, life in the Navy is a continuous
learning process. No matter how effective or thorough
the formal training may be, “there’s always more
a sailor needs to know”. The Navy works best when
more experienced sailors and officers can pass along
knowledge to where it is needed. “Informal learning
and knowledge sharing is vital,” says Mr Martin. This
The Navy works best when more
experienced sailors and officers
can pass along knowledge
to where it is needed
could be fundamental or technical information such
as how to execute a critical task. Or, he says, it could
be something as basic as “how many pairs of socks or
toothbrushes to pack for a specific mission”.
Clearly, notes Mr Martin, sailors not only can, but
also need to learn a great deal from one another.
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
11
Building an integrated talent management strategy
So one of the objectives of the Navy is to encourage and enable such knowledge-sharing through as
many formal and informal mechanisms as possible.
One of the principal ways the Navy is tackling this
objective is by placing numerous knowledge-leveraging capabilities into a system known as Navy
Knowledge Online or NKO.
NKO (https://wwwa.nko.navy.mil) is the focal
point for a broad array of knowledge management,
leadership and even fundamental human resources
management tools. NKO, explains Mr Decker, allows
sailors and officers to:
n Interact with peers Through NKO, Navy
personnel can access chat rooms, message boards
and related tools—all organised according to various
“learning centres”, which in turn branch into specific
themes and subjects known as “communities of
practice”. For example, “there are areas organised
by rating, areas that would provide peer support for,
say, an apprentice gunner’s mate”, says Mr Decker.
Using these tools, personnel are able to both share
and obtain help and information. “This is the way the
new generation communicates,” confirms Mr Decker.
“NKO merely enables the interactions.”
n Interact with mentors As valuable as peer
interaction may be, NKO also enables a number of
informal and semi-formal mentor relationships. As
Mr Decker explains: “You’ll see a thread on a message board where an officer or a more senior sailor is
stepping in to help some young sailor gather some
information—that’s informal.” But in other cases,
“you might go to one of the communities and look for
someone to mentor one of your people”.
n Access e-learning The Navy gives sailors
virtually unlimited “opportunities to prepare for
advancement”, says Mr Martin. One of the principal
means forward is by expanding an individual skill set
12
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
through training. Here, the NKO enables access to
a vast array of instruction. According to Mr Decker,
the Navy delivers “more than 6,000 courses” in its elearning portfolio. In fact, e-learning is now a critical
component of formal Navy training. E-learning tools
that might, for example, teach a sailor how to maintain a firearm or repair an electronic switch, says Mr
Decker, are “self-paced, allowing a sailor to progress
as fast as he is able”. As with nearly all of the Navy’s
e-learning modules, “there’s a test at the end to assess competency, and it’s all tracked and recorded”.
n Manage careers and lives Just as the HR
functions of private companies endeavour to make
life easier on employees, so too the Navy is using
technology to try to improve enlisted life for sailors,
officers and their families. For example, NKO “enables
interaction with families via instant messaging”, says
Mr Decker. But in addition, Navy personnel can also
use NKO to gain access to tools that help them to
manage their bank accounts, benefits, leave statuses,
ratings, and other personal and career issues.
Coming soon (to a battleship near you)
Although every sailor and officer in the US Navy
knows and relies on NKO, granting access on anything akin to a 24/7/365 basis remains elusive. The
issue today is bandwidth. “Sailors in the sand in Iraq
usually don’t have access to the internet,” says Mr
Decker. “And a lot of ships can only get access to a
limited functionality version—that’s ‘NKO at Sea’.”
Mr Decker adds: “In addition to making sure buttons click and the right information is getting to the
right people, a big part of our assignment is looking
for more ways to get more access to more people
more often.”
Building an integrated talent management strategy
Office Depot: Finding the right people
U
nsurprisingly, Office Depot needs talent as the company is expanding aggressively in the US and globally. Today, the retailer
operates approximately 1,200 retail stores in North
America. But by the end of 2007, Office Depot hopes
to have opened 100 more locations, with another
125-150 stores in place by the end of 2008.
In addition, Office Depot has an aggressive plan
for store renovations. Over the next two to three
years, the company intends to implement its new
“M2” format, a retail concept intended to enhance
the customer experience, at most locations. With all
that is happening, JoAnne Moeller, vice-president
of human resources, compensation, benefits and
HR-Information management is confident that for
the right people Office Depot has a variety of great
opportunities.
The culture of collaboration
So how does the company define “right”? Ms Moeller
believes that it is important to understand certain key
elements of the culture at Office Depot.
First and foremost, she says, “Office Depot is very
much a culture of shared responsibility and collaboration”. Getting things done requires “a lot of
co-operation and shared ownership of projects. And
that means finding people who not only understand
how to get things done but who also understand the
importance of working with others.”
No matter the source of the potential employee,
and no matter that employee’s paper qualifications,
“they can expect to be interviewed extensively, much
more than they’re likely used to”, says Ms Moeller.
“On average, there will be at least 8 to 10 interviews
“We’re only a 20-year-old company
in an aggressive growth mode.
If you come here, you’re going to
help us build the process.”
JoAnne Moeller, VP HR-Information, Office Depot
at certain levels. This is very much a culture where
there is collective ownership of the hiring process.”
Office Depot needs talent, “but that doesn’t mean
we’re going to settle for just anyone”, she adds. “In
some companies, an individual is hired to become a
member of an existing process. We’re only a 20-year-old
company in an aggressive growth mode. If you come
here, you’re going to help us build the processes.”
According to Ms Moeller, the rigorous nature of the
interviewing process becomes critical for at least two
reasons. First, “it weeds out anyone who wouldn’t fit
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
13
Building an integrated talent management strategy
into our team-oriented and collaborative culture—
and that’s important because it’s a very close-knit
company”. Second, says Ms Moeller, the cost of making a hiring mistake is too high. In her experience,
the numerous perspectives gained from a process
featuring multiple interviewers are highly effective in
identifying issues before they become problems for
the company. “If we can identify someone who might
lead us down a wrong path, someone who’s not fitting in, that’s a lot of damage that can be avoided.”
The role of technology
In line with its aggressive growth, Office Depot is
also in the midst of revamping its underlying HR
technology. “We believe we can use technology to be
more efficient in HR and to do more with less,” says
Ms Moeller. “[Technology] can help us automate the
mundane aspects of the work so we can focus more
attention on the strategy.”
A recently deployed and now more effective HR
software and technology platform is helping the
company in at least two ways. First, the new systems are helping Office Depot to “gather, evaluate
and manage our HR data”, says Ms Moeller. “It’s
helping us ensure that our performance management is more organised and more effective. It’s
giving us better quality and better control of our
HR processes. That’s particularly important in a
large and fast-growing global organisation—to
be able to keep track of your people wherever
they might be.” The value here, she adds, is “just
tremendous”.
Second, the new systems are helping the company to provide better HR support to its employees.
“We’re paying a lot more attention these days to the
work-life balance,” notes Ms Moeller. And one of the
ways the company can give its associates more flexibility, she explains, “is by delivering more services
online”. With the new systems, “our associates can
get the information they need, make changes such
as adjusting payroll deductions or updating an address, from anywhere at any time”.
Unisys Corporation: A case of partnership
F
undamental business strategies at
Unisys Corporation, an IT consulting, services and outsourcing company, are focused
more acutely than ever. According to Mary Massung,
vice-president of Unisys University, in particular the
company is now pursuing five strategic initiatives it
believes are the most promising in terms of business
development and profitability.
But Ms Massung believes that such a shift carries
implications for the whole of HR disciplines includ14
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
ing workforce planning, recruitment, succession
planning or, in her case, training and development.
Consequently, the whole of the Unisys HR universe is
now subtly and in some cases dramatically reconfiguring its services to reflect the business’s redefinition
of opportunities and priorities.
Always aligned
Unisys’s various HR activities have always received
high marks in terms of alignment with the business
Building an integrated talent management strategy
lines. “We’ve done a lot of assessments, collecting
voice of the client data and tracking the [perceived]
value,” she explains. “What they tell us is that they
feel we have excellent processes and tools and that
they like our service technology—like the self-service
aspects of HR processes.”
be pulled from their industry focus. Rather, “they
will stay within their industry competency, but we’ll
broaden their skill set by introducing them to specific strategic solutions.”
Now translating this initiative into practical HR
“We’re partnering with resource
management to try and get employees
placed into assignments that will get
them the development they need.”
Mary Massung, VP, Unisys University
Even more importantly, she adds, “we see they
view us as a partner, which is what we strive for”. But
going forward, particularly as the company continues
its strategic transition, “they are looking for us to
partner even more closely. They want us to help them
achieve their new business strategies.”
As Ms Massung says: “This means we’ll be taking
a look at refreshing our HR competency models
for recruitment, workforce planning, succession
management, development/learning, [essentially]
any area affected by the shifting business strategy.
HR will be realigning its processes to reflect the new
focus of the business.”
Expanding skill sets
One consequence of the shifting business priorities
in a case in point. As Ms Massung explains: “Within
our service delivery, where our consultants interact
with clients, we’re shifting from a focus on broad
industry consulting to a focus on consulting around
specific strategic solutions that support our key
industries.” This is not to say that consultants will
terms, the task becomes one of, for example, better
organising work experiences. As Ms Massung notes,
”resource management” is the group within Unisys
that selects and deploys teams of consultants to
client engagements. So today, she adds, “we’re
partnering with resource management to try and get
employees placed into assignments that will get them
the development and experience they need”.
Next, she believes, is the challenge to interpret
the same idea across all of Unisys’s HR functions. “If
we know we have five growth areas where we want to
focus, what does that mean for recruitment? Those
are the skill sets where we’ll want to focus.” Next, she
asks, “Where are the best sources of this needed talent? What are the right labour models in terms of cost
and effectiveness? Should we outsource or offshore?
Can we develop the talent we need?”
Ms Massung believes that it is all “an issue of workforce planning, and that’s where we’ve been asked to
focus our attention, towards helping the organisation
migrate towards the skills we need for the five specific
growth areas, the new business priorities”.
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
15
Building an integrated talent management strategy
Of course, this also has implications for Ms Massung’s primary focus within the HR group at Unisys,
Unisys University. The university, explains Ms Massung, offers “classroom and online instruction” to
Unisys employees throughout the world. Owing to
the new business opportunities, she says, “we’re
developing appropriate training”.
The tight integration of these modules
across the enterprise allows HR to spend
more time performing client consulting
and spend less time processing data
High-tech, right-cost HR
Ms Massung describes her company’s HR technology as a “globally integrated platform”. There is
one instance (database) to support the global
Unisys population. The self-service aspect has been
leveraged to support all employees, managers
and human resources. This database feeds over 90
other internal and external systems and databases.
Individual modules include candidate tracking and
talent acquisition for recruiting, a performance
management module, a profiling system to enable
employee self-service, and an enterprise learning
management piece to support employee learning
and development.
The tight integration of these modules across the
enterprise allows human resources to spend more
time performing client consulting and spend less time
processing data.
Unisys prides itself on its delivery of HR services—and in particular on the way the company leverages technology to obtain the best balance of cost
and service. This cost/benefit ratio applies equally
16
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
to basic HR services such as the maintenance of employee data and processing of routine transactions
as well as to areas such as workforce planning and
performance management—and even the operations
of Unisys University.
For example, in the university, explains Ms Massung, “we’re looking at all of our internal processes
and asking ourselves, where are the places where
we could move this to a lower cost delivery alternative?” Lower value-added processes such as scheduling or administration are good candidates “for outsourcing or offshoring”. In this way, she explains,
“my folks can be more engaged with the clients; can
focus more on education and development and less
on administration”.
In general, says Ms Massung, “the more you can
automate the back office processes, the more you
can migrate to lower-cost delivery models, and that
means the more resources you can devote to strategic, value-adding activities like the things we’ve been
talking about”.
Building an integrated talent management strategy
Aditya Birla Group: Dealing with rapid growth
D
r Santrupt Misra is the global head
of HR and IT for India-based Aditya
Birla Group (ABG). A conglomerate with leadership
positions in a broad range of endeavours from aluminium and cement to telecoms and insurance, ABG
faces many challenges in HR management. Nonetheless, says Dr Misra, “we believe our practices are
proving highly effective”.
Where’s the talent?
The most visible challenge for Dr Misra, by now a
familiar refrain within this report, is “how do we attract, develop and retain our talent?” This challenge,
as Dr Misra sees it, is multi-faceted.
For example, one piece of the puzzle is figuring out
“how to accelerate leadership development”, he says.
The company is currently experiencing double-digit
growth both in India and globally, creating enormous
pressure to move executives “up” in the organisation.
Basically, says Dr Misra, “new investments are proceeding almost faster than we can grow our talent”.
Another related challenge is the increasingly
far-flung nature of ABG’s operations. As Dr Misra
explains, “not only is there great demand for leaders
and talent, we need to develop managers who are
capable of managing in a context of fast-changing
economies and markets, and multiple cultures”.
Next up are the particular challenges of attracting and retaining talent in a high-growth emerging market. “In India,” he explains, “with the fast
growth in the domestic economy, companies are
always competing for the best managers—there is a
real talent shortage.”
Finally, the critical challenge is finding a way to
“In India, with the fast growth in the
domestic economy, companies are
always competing for the best managers—
there’s a real talent shortage.”
Dr Santrupt Misra, global head of HR and IT, Aditya Birla Group
address all of the above issues within the context of
a single set of HR policies and practices. “We are a
conglomerate,” he explains. “So from a technology
and a strategy perspective, we have to figure out how
to put in global HR processes that provide the value
of a generic approach but still allow variation in the
individual businesses and markets where needed.”
The solution set
Addressing all of the above requires a comprehensive
set of solutions. First of all, the company attempts to
accelerate the career development of high-potential
personnel. “One thing you will see here most visibly,”
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
17
Building an integrated talent management strategy
says Dr Misra, “is that we see to it that the empowerment levels are pushed very far down the line.” In
other words, “very early in a career here, you’ll see
people being given larger responsibilities and significant opportunities to develop competencies”.
Explosive growth meant that the company
rapidly evolved beyond the capabilities
of its legacy HR systems
But Dr Misra believes that, particularly in a competitive talent marketplace, there is no one size fits
all solution. “You must develop people. You must
show them where they fit in to the organisation. You
must compensate them fairly, but, more importantly,
you need to show them where they can go in the business. You need to give them training and you need to
provide them with opportunities. They need to feel
valued by the business.”
The solution set
The company also fosters development and retention by
encouraging innovation. Dr Misra says “there are certain
people with great ideas and who thrive on greater responsibility”. So to tap into this talent the company runs
an internal programme known as IDventure. The way
it works, says Dr Misra, “is that if you have a workable
business idea, we tell you to come forward and develop
a business plan”. The best of these plans “receive the
support of the company”. The authors of such plans “are
given leave with pay to develop their ideas to the fullest.
It’s a source of some great business ideas and it is very
valuable for developing our people.”
The group has also organised what it refers to as an
assessment centre. Here, chosen high-potential execu18
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
tives are given opportunities for cross-cultural training
with various external companies. “We run consortium
programmes with six or so other companies,” explains
Dr Misra, trading personnel on short- to medium-term
assignments. Within this framework, “we assess the
participants and we can track their performance with
their peers from these other companies”.
New HR systems
Explosive growth, says Dr Misra, meant that the
company rapidly evolved beyond the capabilities of
its legacy HR systems. As such, in early 2006, the
company deployed the first modules of a new and
comprehensive enterprise HR package. The new technology, he insists, “will cut costs and improve quality
and visibility almost immeasurably”.
One of the biggest sets of benefits anticipated by
Dr Misra is standardisation. “This is a fast-growing organisation and it is diverse.” But with a standardised
HR platform, “when someone moves from one business to another, they don’t have to learn new systems
and processes”. Similarly, he explains, “the rotation
and tracking of people is much, much simpler”.
Dr Misra also appreciates the ability to have all
information on his workforce available for data mining. “Say we need to find someone who’s worked on
a greenfield project outside of India, or who speaks
Mandarin or Spanish and is a black belt in Six Sigma,”
says Dr Misra. All in all, says Dr Misra, “the new technology is greatly improving our effectiveness and the
quality of our decision-making”.
Building an integrated talent management strategy
Conclusion
O
rganisations across the private
and public sectors, and in locations ranging from North America and Western
Europe to the emerging markets, are recognising
that there is enormous—and often untapped—strategic value in HR. As is the case with other staff
functions, organisations benefit when HR forms a
collaborative partnership with business units. And
some of the highest returns result when HR and
business units collaborate in areas such as workforce assessment, recruitment, retention, training
and development.
Integrated, scalable HR applications and processes
can promote a consistent culture, plan and strategy
without compromising local nuance and effectiveness. These systems can help organisations to engage employees directly and make them responsible for their actions, which can have a direct impact
on the success of the organisation. Moreover, they
can do so without overburdening HR staff.
Questions that organisations need to begin to ask
themselves include:
l
l
l
l
l
How much untapped value resides in your
company’s HR function?
What can be done to realise more of this
potential value?
What is the concrete strategy that can lead to realising this value?
How can the use of standardised processes help in implementation?
What is the role of technology?
While every effort has been taken to verify
the accuracy of this information, neither The
Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd. nor the sponsor
of this report can accept any responsibility
or liability for reliance by any person on this
report or any of the information, opinions or
conclusions set out in the report.
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007
19
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